Archive for April, 2010

Firefox 1.1 Beta 1 for Maemo is ready to install. For this release, the focus was some UI features we didn’t have time to put in the initial release. We are also using your feedback from previous releases and nightly builds to help improve the browsing experience.

As always, we’ve provided unbranded Fennec desktop builds on Windows, Mac, and Linux. You can use these if you don’t have a Maemo device or to aid in add-on development. Add-on developers should use this release to update add-ons from Firefox 1.0.x for Maemo.

Note to Ovi Store Customers: If you installed Firefox 1.0 from the Ovi Store, you will not be able to upgrade to Firefox 1.1 Beta 1 (either from the N900 Application Manager or by downloading the software from Mozilla). We are working to solve this for future releases so that anyone can participate in our Beta programs. Don’t worry, though, if you got Firefox 1.0 from either the Ovi store or directly from Mozilla, you will be updated to Firefox 1.1 (final) when it is released.

We want to get as much feedback as possible before moving to a final release candidate, so please leave comments or file bugs.

With Firefox 1.1 Beta 1 for Maemo ready to go and the final release not far away, now is an excellent time for add-on developers to update their add-ons. Obviously, Mozilla wants as many add-ons as possible to be compatible with the latest version of Firefox Mobile.

AMO (addons.mozilla.org) is ready for add-ons to set maxVersion to 1.1.*

Please test your add-on before bumping the version. You can use the nightly builds for Maemo, as well as the desktop versions to help test. Here are a few things to keep in mind while testing add-ons:

Site Menu: The site menu was redesigned and uses different XUL and JS. If your add-on adds a command to the site menu, please check out the changes and update your code.

Context Menu: Long taps (or right clicks on desktop) will display a context menu, but only limited targets are allowed (images, links and mailto: links). If your add-on can benefit form the context menu, use it. But use it wisely.

Startup: When starting the browser, the Awesomebar Screen is no longer shown. A true Start Page system is now used. Adjust your add-on startup process if needed.

Portrait Mode: Firefox for Maemo (and Android) now supports dynamic portrait/landscape orientation. Make sure your add-on works well in both orientations.

Theme Breakage: Check to make sure the add-on is not including the chrome://global/content/global.css stylesheet. It will break the mobile platform CSS. An easy way to see this breakage is to look at the toggle buttons in Preferences UI. If those buttons look like checkboxes, the CSS is broken. This seems to be very common for new add-ons.

Check for Errors: When testing the add-on, launch the browser from a terminal and use | fennec –jsconsole | to open the JS Error Console. Make sure no errors appear in the console while testing the add-on.

If you have any questions, please use Mozilla IRC and join the #mobile channel. Use mibbit if you don’t have an IRC client. I’ll be there (mfinkle), as will many other helpful people who can help answer your questions.

Fennec 1.1 now supports context menus. Using a long tap (aka tap-n-hold), or right-click on desktop versions, you can get a context menu to appear.

We intentional designed the context menu system to be simple and minimalistic. We do not want large context menus with many, many commands. Currently, context menus are only displayed if the user long-taps on a link or an image. Technically, not all links will activate the context menu. javascript: links, for example will not activate the context menu.

Fennec 1.1 will only ship with two context menu commands: Open Link in New Tab and Save Image.

Add-ons can extend the context menu. Just overlay the context menu list of commands, which is <richlistbox id="context-commands"> in the XUL. Each command must have a type attribute and only 3 types are recognized: link, image, mailto.

The context menu system will automatically show/hide commands based on where the user long-taps. Under normal circumstances, the add-on will not need to worry about showing or hiding the context menu command:

If an image is tapped, only type="image" commands will be shown.

If the element is an image inside a link, both types of commands will be shown.

If no link or image is picked, no context menu will be shown at all.

Yes, this is a bit restrictive, but that’s the way we want context menus to work for now. Feedback is always appreciated and Mozilla IRC (#mobile channel) is available to help answer questions.

The Mobile Team has been hard at work on the 1.1 release of Firefox Mobile. This release will mainly be a Nokia Maemo release, but the current Android builds are based on the same front-end.

For the 1.1 release, we are focusing on some UI features we didn’t have time to put in the initial release. We are also using your feedback to help improve the browsing experience. You can see the list of planned features on the planning page. As you can see, we have completed much of the work and the beta release is quickly approaching.